This invention relates to a method of and an apparatus collecting and transferring viscous liquids.
In many industrial installations, there are leaking bearings or machines which discharge relatively large quantities of grease or heavy viscous oil which has heretofore been discharged on land or water and this practice can no longer be employed. In other instances, the grease or oil is allowed to fall into a reclaimation system which uses various methods to separate the oil or grease from water and other foreign matter at a considerable expense. The present invention recognizes that there are instances when the oil or grease leaking from the machine may be captured before it excessively is contaminated and it may be either reused or transferred to containers e.g., barrels for further purification before reuse. Such equipment should be small, portable, relatively inexpensive, and capable of handling heavy viscous liquids which do not flow like water and hence will cavitate if tried to be pumped by the usual liquid impellor pumps.
More specifically, the present invention will be described, although it is not limited to, a steel company operation, in which heavy steel rolling presses are operated continuously and avoid at almost any cost the necessity of shutdown of the entire line. Under such circumstances, it frequently becomes necessary to run bearings even when they are leaking considerably. This is accomplished in many cases merely by accepting the resulting excess lubricant leakage from the bearing and by feeding more lubricant back into the bearing to compensate for the loss. Of great concern, however, is the fact that the leaked lubricant is generally wasted, or the cost of reclamation thereof from water and foreign matter is very high. Such areas become greasy and dangerous for continual access and manipulation of collecting barrels or the like if such are to be used to collect the leaking grease. The access to and areas about such rolls is limited for handling heavy barrels of grease, even if collected manually.
Another problem associated with the use of certain lubricants in the form of greases having high viscosities is that an ordinary pump will not effectively operate to move the grease, in that, cavitation occurs at the inlet passage to the pump. Consequently, efforts to utilize mechanical pumps in the collecting and reclaiming of a viscous liquid such as lubricating grease, generally have been proven unsuccessful.